What is Hyperautomation—and How Does It Help Government?

By Lisa Sigler, Communications Lead, with additional reporting from Chris Lindsey, Senior Technology Manager

Technology changes every day—so it is no surprise if a tech term like “hyperautomation” is unfamiliar. However, hyperautomation is an important idea with major implications for the way government entities do their work. Let’s dive in to learn what hyperautomation is, and how it can help government.

Defining Hyperautomation

The term “hyperautomation” is not brand new—it was highlighted in the Gartner Emerging Trends report in 2022. But although it is familiar to those who work closely with technology, “hyperautomation” isn’t exactly a word folks use every day. It’s not in the Merriam Webster dictionary (at least not yet), but we can use the dictionary to break the word down and look at the definitions of its two parts:

Hyper- (prefix). Above, beyond.

Automation (noun). The technique of making an apparatus, a process, or a system operate automatically.

Put them together, and we can find a basic definition of hyperautomation: A way to make processes or systems go above and beyond just working automatically.

That sounds good, but that still doesn’t explain exactly what hyperautomation is or what the benefits might be. For a more detailed definition, we look at Gartner’s Information Technology Glossary:

“Hyperautomation is a business-driven, disciplined approach that organizations use to rapidly identify, vet and automate as many business and IT processes as possible.”

Let’s dig into this. Notice that this definition hinges on the word “approach.” Hyperautomation is not a single tool, process or project. It goes far beyond using software to replace manual data entry or send marketing emails. Instead, it is a focused, intentional, integrated strategy that uses technology to achieve efficiency across your organization. You don’t buy “hyperautomation” and plug it in. Instead, your agency, department, bureau, or office makes a commitment to combining tools and processes to achieve hyperautomation maturity.

Why is Hyperautomation Important?

One of the main drivers of hyperautomation is the need to do more with less. Everyone can relate to that need, but it is particularly important for government entities. If you automate most processes, you reduce your reliance on specific employees to do manual work. As administrations change, workers retire or move on, or resource levels fluctuate, essential workflows will keep working efficiently.

From a technological perspective, IT systems are growing beyond the average IT department’s ability to effectively support or easily fix. Hyperautomation includes finding reliable, automated ways to keep systems running without the need for human intervention.

How Does Hyperautomation Work?

Hyperautomation combines AI, intelligent platforms, and modern best practices to optimize end-to-end, mission-critical processes.

For government entities, this means pairing a deep understanding of government workflows and mission goals with the technical expertise to digitize complex business processes. It also includes a thorough review of existing and desired business processes and thoughtful consideration of compliance requirements.

True hyperautomation comprises governance, security, and strategic technology partnerships. Here are some tools that you might use in your hyperautomation efforts:

• AI/ML
• Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
• Low-Code/No-Code platforms
• Advanced analytics
• Data integration platforms
• Hyperautomation in Action (Use Cases)

We’ve looked at what hyperautomation means, why it matters, and how it works. That’s important background, but it is just interesting information if we can’t put it to practical use. With that in mind, here are just three of the limitless possibilities of what hyperautomation might look like for a government entity.

Approving requests—without human intervention. An organization can use a binary classification machine learning model to analyze historical decision-making data in an IT service management (ITSM) tool. The model can automatically evaluate whether to approve or deny a request, generating a confidence score for each decision. If the confidence score meets a high threshold, the system will automatically perform the approval. If not, it will leave the request for a human to manually review and decide. This approach allows an organization to automate 80-90% of request decisions, significantly reducing the need for manual human interactions.

Preventing security breaches before they happen. Your automated system can use real-time operational data such as network traffic to detect anomalies and prevent security breaches and incidents from occurring. AI can make decisions to block unexpected traffic or detect and prevent new or unexpected network access patterns from happening before they become a problem and lead to larger issues.

Scaling network availability for better customer experience. By leveraging application and service response times and latency data in real-time, your systems can automatically predict and prevent outages and poor end user experience. AI can make decisions to scale infrastructure or take other corrective actions as needed in advance to ensure high availability and to prevent end users from experiencing unwanted interruptions in critical systems.

The Benefits of Hyperautomation for Government

Hyperautomation takes full advantage of modern technology and workflow best practices to help government work better. Benefits include:

• Operational efficiency
• Cost savings from reduction of manual processes
• Accuracy
• Enforcement of regulatory compliance
• Scalability
• Improved user and customer experience
• Focus on mission success

Acuity is committed to partnering with federal agencies to seize the benefits of hyperautomation, uncovering and implementing solutions to enhance efficiency and effectiveness. In future posts, we’ll explore additional use cases and discuss how Acuity supports government on the path to hyperautomation. In the meantime, contact us at bd@myacuity.com to learn more about Acuity’s hyperautomation offerings.